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The Battle of Midway, fought 70 years ago this week, was an extraordinary victory for the U.S. Navy and proved to be the strategic pivot in World War II's Pacific theater of operations.

During the three-day sea battle of early June 1942, a scant six months after Japan's devastating strike on its fleet base at Pearl Harbor, the outnumbered USN sank four Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carriers. Japan lost highly trained crews, irreplaceable sailors and elite naval aviators.

As the carrier hulls hit the Pacific Ocean bottom, Japan's strategic offensive war ended and its long defensive war began. Though the Pacific war continued another three years and two months, America had seized the strategic offensive.

Thirty years of planning for a battle of annihilation with Japanese naval forces somewhere in the central or western Pacific, to include a sophisticated fleet training regimen beginning in the 1920s, prepared the U.S. Navy for Midway.

Defeating the Japanese required astute and decisive crisis leadership. The steady nerves of Adm. Chester Nimitz, commander of U.S. Pacific forces, contributed immensely to the victory, as did his uncanny positioning to the American fleet.

Records declassified over the last two decades have given historians a better understanding of the key role intelligence played in the victory, especially code-breaking.

As the spring of 1942 progressed, Station Hypo, a Navy radio intercept and code-breaking unit at Pearl Harbor, became increasingly adept at decrypting and reading Japan's naval communications codes. The code was complex, and cracking it took time.

The Japanese fleet, it appeared, was targeting an area called “AF,” where the much weaker USN would be forced to fight at a numerical disadvantage. Analysts believed the code “AF” signified Midway Island, but they weren't certain. Hypo's commander, USN Lt. Cmdr. Joseph J. Rochefort, devised a trick. In mid-May 1942, the Navy broadcast a phony message: Midway Island's garrison faced a water crisis because its freshwater-producing machinery had broken down. Shortly thereafter, Japanese radio communications reported that “AF” needed water.

Nimitz concluded that the Japanese intended to take Midway. He reinforced the island. Intelligence indicated that the Japanese enjoyed a numerical advantage in warships of almost three to one.

Nimitz concentrated his own force of three aircraft carriers northeast of Midway and positioned them so their aircraft could help defend the island and, on order, quickly intercept and attack Japanese carrier forces from the northwest. Nimitz had the Japanese carriers steaming into an ambush. The prepared and courageous USN executed the ambush. The U.S. lost one carrier and 307 dead. In addition to the four sunk carriers, Japan lost a cruiser and more than 3,000 dead.

After Midway, the Japanese could no longer militarily win World War II. They tried to make the war so costly in blood and effort that American will would flag and America would accept a negotiated settlement. Despite Tarawa, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, they failed at that, as well.